3D printing is an emerging field within the modern manufacturing industry. The technology has garnered serious attention, and commercial entities are even opening access to 3D printing hardware for public use to manufacture custom goods. While the technique is revolutionary, there remains much development and opportunity for improving and expanding the application of the technique across a broader range of applications.
A major obstacle to diversifying the applicability of 3D printing techniques, and particularly extrusion-based printing techniques, is limitations on available materials suitable for use with the technique. Conventional extrusion-based 3D printing techniques utilize polymer-based materials such as polycarbonate (PC) and/or acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS). The material is typically filamentous in form, and is fed toward and through a heated nozzle, which melts the material and deposits a melted “bead” on a substrate.
This configuration and technique is limiting. There is no suitable use in extruding liquid-based materials (e.g. slurries, suspensions, solutions, etc.) into arbitrary 3D dimensions because such materials lack strength and will flow too freely upon extrusion. Further, the application of heat to the material at the nozzle precludes using conventional extrusion techniques with energetic materials, such as reactive inks comprising thermite constituents (or any other constituents tending to generate an undesirable reaction or prematurely initiate a desired reaction upon the nozzle applying heat).
Accordingly, it would be beneficial to provide systems, methods, and materials expanding the applicability of conventional 3D printing techniques to new materials such as reactive inks. It would be further beneficial to determine additional techniques for using such reactive inks in new applications such as custom repair and modification of existing materials in nearly any environment, use of reactive inks to provide localized heating to a target, and synthesis of new materials and/or systems using reactive inks.